Mailinglist/Announce guidelines

The Noisebridge-announce mailing list goes to hundreds or thousands of people who range from Noisebridge members to peripherally-interested onlookers who attend one event a year; announce messages sometimes get posted to Laughingsquid and similar forums. Your announcement email should cater to all recipients to the greatest degree possible.

In particular,

people will forward it to their friends.

people will reply to it.

people will not remember to follow links.

Your email to announce should:

have a catchy subject. "Five Minutes of Fame, November 25" is good (the date is optional but beneficial). "We are having a workshop next month at Noisebridge about Processing" is not good. Frontload the subject; many email programs only show the first few words, and Mailman will put "[Noisebridge-anounce]" at the beginning.

contain the essential information in the body of the email for better forwarding:

what is the event about? (One sentence and one paragraph versions.)

when is the event?

where is the event? Include the address and cross street even if it's happening at 2169, not everybody on the list is a regular at the space.

link to a wiki page for more information.

include any necessary information or prerequisites ("Please have Processing installed on your laptop before coming to the workshop, or show up an hour early for help getting Processing installed.")

include a Reply-To header pointing to an appropriate mailing list or the sender.